Watch & Listen

The Siren Six!

The Siren Six! initially formed under the name Stinkfish in Minneapolis around 1994, consisting of vocalist/guitarist Nate Bott, keyboardist Frank Staniszewski, drummer Jeff Conrad, bassist Tim Resudek, trombonist Kevin Matheny and saxophonist John Reineck. After building up a loyal following on the Midwest ska circuit, Stinkfish released their sole LP ...Does It Again in 1995 on the band's self-run label Mr. White Records. Shortly afterwards, Resudek left the band, and, following the addition of Jacy McIntosh, Stinkfish officially changed their name to The Siren Six!.[2]

Signing to Minneapolis-based ska label Kingpin Records, home to such bands as Animal Chin and The Pacers, The Siren Six! recorded their debut album The Voice With a Built-In Promise in 1996. Citing the Pixies, Elvis Costello, The Jam and The Selecter among their influences, The Siren Six!'s music stood in contrast to the then-popular ska punk sound, combining 2-Tone-style ska with heavy indie rock and Mod influences and a focus on introspective lyricism, a combination Kingpin Records marketed the band with as "2tone/mod/emoska".[2]

Following a national tour with Slow Gherkin, the band recorded their follow-up album, the EP Young and Professional, in early 1998. Unlike the overtly ska-based sound of their debut, Young and Professional featured a more prominent focus on rock and power pop, though still retained a distinct ska influence.[3] In the summer of 1999, The Siren Six! relocated to Los Angeles, California in the hopes of landing a major record deal.[3] However, heightened tensions within the band eventually led to their break-up the following year.

Since their disbandment, members of The Siren Six! have moved on to numerous musical projects. Bott and Staniszewski went on to play in the Los Angeles-based pop rock band Big City Rock from 2001 to 2008, before forming another group called The Remainers in 2009. Jeff Conrad was also a member of Big City Rock from 2001 to 2003, when he left to replace Jason Schwartzman in Phantom Planet. Since 2003, Reineck has fronted the New York indie rock band Soft, while McIntosh has played in a several national touring bands in the Twin Cities from 2000-2005 including End Transmission, Askeleton and Ela, before forming his current project THEMES in 2005.

In 2007, Conrad released a trailer on his YouTube account for a prospective Siren Six! documentary entitled Six Is One, chronicling the band's move from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. As of 2012, there's been no word on the production status of the film.

In May 2017, the band announced a "One Night Only" reunion show in Minneapolis at The 7th Street Entry on August 26, 2017, to support the 20th Anniversary Re-releases of the bands previous catalogue on Jump Start Records. The show quickly sold out, so another show was added earlier the same evening.

Slow Gherkin

Someone once told us that Slow Gherkin couldn’t have happened just anywhere, any time. It took a small town and a handful of best friends to make it unfold in the way it did.
Most of us did grow up on the west side of Santa Cruz, and AJ and James, the band’s dueling guitarists and vocalists, went to preschool together. We started our first garage band in seventh grade. (Standout track: “Waterin’ the Weedz.”) Then, at the beginning of the nineties, we stumbled upon ska music via a Skankin’ Pickle show at a downtown community center. In fact, we ran into the band late that night: They were lost in the suburbs, and they let us roll in their van in exchange for directions to the after-party. (Mike Park, who was sitting shotgun at the time, ended up signing us to his label, Asian Man Records, six years later.) Seeing Bad Manners and Fishbone sealed the deal, and over the summer of 1993 the band’s original members started playing as Slow Gherkin.
According to the liner notes to our first release, the 1994 seven-inch Death of a Salesman, “we get to play clubs and parties and B-B-Q’s for all our friends.” That just about sums up our first three years. Our membership grew to 10, and we started touring the west in a cavalcade of sensible cars. In 1996 we released our first album, Double Happiness, and bought our first van, the Creamsicle. The next summer we toured the whole country for the first time—with a dauntingly tight band from Minneapolis called the Siren Six!
We toured as much as work and school would allow. We traveled with some amazing bands and got put on some unbelievable bills—like an El Paso record shop with Norwegian “death punk” band Turbonegro and a strip mall in Oklahoma City with the Dismemberment Plan. We got to share stages with the genre’s forefathers and torchbearers—the Skatalites, Desmond Dekker, the Selecter, Dave Wakeling, the Toasters.
Between our first and second albums, the bubble that was third-wave ska swelled to its peak size.
It burst right around the time Asian Man released Shed Some Skin, in the fall of 1998.
In 2000, we toured Europe for the first time. We did it
again the next year, chasing the tour bus of a Fat Wreck
Chords band and getting strip-searched by German
policemen. (And we quote: “Are you cold? You vill be
very soon.”) By the time we started talking about our
third album, the onset of adulthood had become
impossible to ignore. In the summer of 2002, Asian
Man put out Run Screaming and James moved to New
York.
Still, we found ourselves unable to resist the urge to get
back together for mini-tours (including a week in
Japan) and Bay Area shows. In 2016 we released our
first new music in 14 years—a two-song E.P. entitled
LIVES.
Now it’s 2018—Shed Some Skin’s 20th birthday, which we’re celebrating with a few shows with
the Siren Six!—and we could comfortably be the fathers of the people we were when Slow
Gherkin got started. We are music teachers, solar technicians, butchers, editors, water-safety
executives, non-profit consultants... and we still think about printing up stickers at Kinko’s at
2:00 a.m., playing beneath the town clock on New Year’s Eve, and crashing around with our
friends in someone’s backyard till the cops came.

Great Apes

Insert hype-up descriptors here. Plain and simple, San Francisco's
Great Apes are a lyrical punk band. Music, much like a bio, is often
at its best when it’s spit out intensely and quickly, with concision
and honesty.